The popularity of the viral multiplayer online video game League of Legends has reached unhealthy levels in South Korea, so much so that it’s starting to affect people’s performance at work and school.
Released in 2009 by American video game developer Riot Games, the game allows users to create a team of up to five players who must strategize to kill the opposing team’s characters to win. It has created a cult following among South Korean youth as well as adults in their 20s and 30s. The addiction has gotten so bad that it’s starting to affect people’s day-to-day lives.
“Some students are either not coming to school at all, or they’re sleeping during classes after playing the game until midnight,” Kwak Eun-joo, the head of the student guidance department at Gwangyang Middle School, told the Korea Times. “I also heard that students who don’t play League of Legends are subject to being bullied or left out by their classmates.”
Indeed, League of Legends has become something of a sociocultural sensation in South Korea. Last week, more than 100,000 South Koreans reportedly watched the final of League of Legends World Championships at STAPLES Center in Los Angeles, played between a professional e-sports teams from Korea and China.
The Korea Times reports that total hours spent by gamers playing League of Legends at Internet cafes in South Korea in the month of June alone was a staggering 76 million hours, seven times more than the 11 million hours logged in the month of January 2012.
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